


Sweet One

by disarm_d



Category: Panic! at the Disco, Sarah Slean - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-02
Updated: 2008-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:08:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarm_d/pseuds/disarm_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The walls of her living room are covered in pictures that she painted.  Brendon wants to take one for his own house, but he doesn't know how to ask.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet One

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks and ♥s to [](http://elfiepike.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://elfiepike.livejournal.com/)**elfiepike** for betaing.

Sarah is tiny and looks like a doll from a distance when she's onstage. She moves like a doll too, arms out at straight and awkward angles, moving like they're on strings. She starts playing a new song, and she slumps down, like the strings have been cut and now there's nothing holding her up, leans forward until her head almost touches the piano and then sits back up, shakes her head, shakes her hair. Keeps on playing.

She's wearing purple shoes with four inch heels and Brendon watches her feet as she works the pedals.

\--

The show is winding down, so he walks backstage, waits through two more encores, just her this time. Her and the piano. Her neck jerks around, but Brendon doesn't think she's actually looking at anything. She uses her whole arms and makes the piano wail.

Backstage, and then she's off again, signing autographs.

\--

In the hotel room, Sarah sits on the bed to take off her shoes. Brendon kneels on the carpet and presses his lips to her ankle. The bed skirt is a dusty blue, and Brendon can't remember if he managed to buy one for his bed back home when he bought his comforter.

Her legs are bare; she's not wearing tights. There are a few tiny blue veins just in and above her knee and then thighs, white thighs. She has a scar that's a hand's span down from her hip, more scars on her arms. She scoots forward on the bed when he starts fingering the hem of her dress.

She watches his hands with her head cocked to the side and for a minute Brendon thinks she's going to say something random and outrageous and that he'll have to try to figure out what it means. Or that she'll make him stop.

But, she stays quiet, and Brendon supposes that the words aren't ones that he'll get to hear yet.

There are red creases on her feet from her shoes, on her hips from her underwear. She lies back on the bed, her hands behind her head, and it's easier when he knows she's not watching him.

\--

\--

They meet when Panic's in Vancouver shooting their third music video off the new CD. They wrap up shooting at 7 PM, which would sound like a good hour to have finished by, except that they started shooting at ten in the morning, the day before. Brendon's so tired he can't even see anymore, and all he wants to do is get back to the hotel, but the director needs him to stay behind for one last take.

When he gets to the hotel, he realizes that he doesn't have a key or a room number or the name that they're staying under. He stands in the lobby and thinks, _fuck it, I'll just sleep on one of those couches._

Sarah steps out of the elevator and Brendon doesn't know what her name is. He doesn't know that she played a show last night and that she's got another one tomorrow. He just knows that she's wearing a jewel-blue dress with pleats and folds in the fabric and he thinks that if he tried to touch her, his fingers might get lost in the material. Her shoulders are bare and sharp and powder-smooth.

He still has stage makeup along his hairline, his neck, where he didn't bother with the cold cream and it didn't wash off. He stares and she notices.

She almost walks past him, but stops at the last moment and says, "I saw the group of other tiny, pretty things heading up to the eighth floor."

"Thanks," he says, before he has time to wonder how she knew he was lost.

\--

They have the next day off and Brendon sleeps until four in the afternoon. Jon and Zack catch a movie and Ryan and Spencer wander off to shop, but Brendon stays behind and runs himself a bath. He cups his hands and squirts water out of the pucker between his thumbs. He washes his hair, twice, and doesn't bother shaving. He still doesn't need to shave more than a few times a week. He thinks about ordering room service but ventures to the lobby to investigate the hotel restaurant first.

He reads the menu, then leans against the wall, thinking about what he actually feels like eating. There's a lot of seafood, but he thinks maybe that's just because they're right on the ocean. He doesn't know if it would be worth leaving the hotel to find a hamburger.

Sarah comes in the front doors with a group of three men, but they leave her at the door and she walks into the hotel by herself. Brendon can spot record execs a mile away and he presses himself closer to the wall unconsciously.

Sarah walks by him, then doubles back. "Did they leave you by yourself again?" she asks.

Brendon shrugs. "Do you know the difference between clams and oysters?" he asks.

She blinks.

Brendon shifts, then gestures at the menu, in a glass display case to the left of his shoulder.

"No wonder you're so tiny," she says.

Brendon looks her over with a pointed sweep of his eyelashes. She's a head shorter than he is, and narrower the whole way down.

"Have dinner with me," he says, and she only hesitates a moment, watching him, before smiling and nodding.

\--

Her room is tidier than his. It's strange that even in the uniform sameness of hotel rooms, a sleep overnight can change the character of the room. Sarah has makeup strewn all along the vanity in front of the bathroom.

Her waist feels tiny in the circle of his hands. He unsnaps her bra with a quick pinch of his fingers and is careful not to push his tongue too deeply into her mouth. He doesn't have a condom on him, but she pulls one from her purse. He doesn't finger her before pushing his dick inside and she's quiet for a long minute. When he starts to rock, she growls out something like a bark and pulls his hair as he pants against the side of her neck.

In the morning, she sits down on a low stool in front of the mirror in a bra and slip, and carefully applies fake eyelashes using tweezers. Brendon lies, feet towards the pillows, on the bed and watches her reflection in the mirror. She uses a brush to transfer the color from her lipstick and dusts powder over her lips afterward. She shakes her head to loosen the curls and fluffs up her hair.

Brendon untangles himself from the sheets and walks over to her.

"I've got a press circuit in twenty minutes," she says.

Brendon wants to say that that would be plenty of time, but he holds his tongue. Instead, he kneels behind her and rests his forehead in between her shoulder blades, his lips almost touching the skin just above the lace of her bra.

Eventually she says, "I have to get dressed," but she waits until he has pulled away and is on his feet before she stands up.

\--

 

 

\--

It's not an industry party, exactly, but it's an event that they both end up going to on their own accord. Brendon's surprised to see her. They don't know each other's schedules. Brendon doesn't even know his own schedule, most of the time. It's just touring and promoting and interviewing, and, yeah, he missed the excitement during their break, but he also forgot how exhausting it can be. He hasn't called her in... five days? A week maybe?

Sarah talks with someone across the room, and Brendon attempts to subtly figure out who he is.

Ryan notices him looking, says, in a low voice, eying her across the distance, "Did you know that she locked herself into a cabin for three months to detox?"

Brendon rolls his eyes. "We locked ourselves in a cabin for like six months."

"Oh my god that's not the same thing," Ryan says, all in one flat tone.

"I think she's cool," Jon says.

\--

Spencer likes her. Brendon knows this because Spencer ask Brendon a million questions about, "What's Sarah been working on lately?" and, "Is she going to have another exhibit of her photography?" and, "When is that movie she directed coming out?"

He asks Brendon, but he won't actually talk to her when she comes in the room, just sits on the couch across from the chair that Brendon and Sarah are sharing and watches her like he's waiting for her to do something amazing and he doesn't want to miss it.

It makes Ryan even more prickly. Brendon doesn't try to intervene when Ryan makes excuses early and shuffles Spencer quickly out of the room, Jon trailing behind.

Sarah wiggles her fingers goodbye to them. She and Brendon catch a cab and she waits until the car is in motion before she twists around in the seat and straddles Brendon, resting her weight on his thighs.

She says, "I think that all of the pot is making your friend paranoid," and Brendon kisses her so that he doesn't have to say anything.

\--

 

 

\--

Brendon only goes to her home once. She wears jeans and a sweater and Brendon makes noises about how close Canada is to the Arctic Tundra until Sarah throws a quilt at him. It lands on his head and Brendon pulls it down, wrapping it around his shoulders.

"We're going to Europe next week," he says when they're sitting together on her couch later that evening. The walls of her living room are covered in pictures that she painted. Brendon wants to take one for his own house, but he doesn't know how to ask.

"Where are you touring?" Sarah asks.

Brendon thinks for a minute, but he honesty isn't entire sure which cities they'll be in. He could make educated guesses. "I'll send you the itinerary when they send it to me," he says.

She gives him a look, and Brendon feels embarrassed for some reason. "Do you always know what you're going to be doing weeks ahead of time?" he asks.

"We have different kinds of careers," she says.

\--

 

 

\--

Brendon shows her the first full-length song that he's written by himself in three years and she won't say a word about it.

"You can tell me if you don't like it," he says, grabbing the notebook back and holding it in his lap. "I don't care. It was just something I was playing around with."

"What is it you think I know that you don't?" she says, pulling her legs up onto the chair and watching him from over the top of her knees.

He looks down at the book on his lap. "How to put together words that people want to listen to," he says, forcing a laugh.

"Show your band," she says.

Brendon shrugs and opens his mouth, but she just repeats, "Show your band. And don't tell them it was something you were just playing around with."

\--

 

 

\--

The bathtub is a generous oval instead of a slim rectangle, and they fit in easily together. Brendon sits with his back against the tub, Sarah with her back against him. He dips his finger in the water, then presses them to her shoulder, making the little droplets run down her arm.

"Stop cataloging the minutia of my body," she says, and Brendon blinks slowly.

Brendon moves his hand, sliding it down her arm and resting it on her belly, tucking his chin over her shoulder.

"I think you've never seen a naked woman before," she says.

"I'm not a --" Brendon starts.

"I think you've never seen a naked _woman_ before," she says again, which is probably true. He's seen girls trying to look like women, and girls who were maybe women but were still trying to look like girls.

He reaches his fingers out and says, "You have nice skin."

"I can't tell if you make me feel old or young," she says and pushes away, stepping out of the tub.

"I can't tell either," Brendon offers, but he knows how he wants her to make him feel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
